When news broke that the California Department of Justice settled a $400,000 sexual harassment settlement involving one of her longtime staffers, Larry Wallace, Harris was supposedly stunned.

Completing this poll entitles you to our news updates free of charge. You may opt out at anytime. You also agree to our Privacy Policy and Terms of Use.The senator didn’t know that Wallace preyed on a female executive at the California Department of Justice while Harris was attorney general in 2016. The senator was similarly oblivious to the fact that Wallace was still a defendant in a lawsuit the next year when she decided to bring him to Washington to serve as a senior adviser.

“We were unaware of this issue and take accusations of harassment extremely seriously. This evening, Mr. Wallace offered his resignation to the senator, and she accepted it,” spokeswoman Lily Adams wrote in an email to the Sacramento Bee.

This would be more believable if this was an isolated incident of ignorance. Unfortunately for Harris and her presidential hopes, she has a habit of know-nothingness: Things would go bad, the headlines would be ugly, and California’s top cop would insist on her own obliviousness.

The latest information, however, as reported by the Bee, suggests Harris had longer than previously reported to discover and act on the allegations.

When Wallace resigned earlier this month, some were already alarmed that Harris could have been unaware of misconduct in her office while she served as attorney general and that she hired the offending employee to work for her Senate office. “For Harris to flatly deny any knowledge of this settlement seems, shall we say, far-fetched. For the moment, let’s take her at her word,” the Bee editorial board wrote. “A second and equally troubling interpretation is that Harris isn’t a terribly good manager, and that her staff was insulating her from information critical to the performance of her duties.”

The misconduct was known to others in the office for which Harris was responsible, according to the Bee.

Harris “took responsibility” for the incident, but blamed staff for failing to inform her in the 26 months since the victim’s first notice. “That’s what makes me upset about this. There’s no question I should have been informed about this. There’s no question. And there were ample opportunities when I could have been informed,” she said.

Harris is widely expected to run for president in 2020. Her purported ignorance of employee misconduct and the concomitant lawsuit potentially clash with her vocal support for the #MeToo movement. The Bee‘s editorial board worried the revelations bode ill for her presidential ambitions. “This is hardly a propitious beginning to a presidential candidacy,” the board wrote.